in recent weeks facebook has shown a desire to strengthen its global data centers with the release of wedge 100 top-of-the-rack network switch and its newly announced backpack 100g switch platform to connect all the racks inside a data center.

facebook's design for the new backpack 100g switch platform. (facebook)

the technology is intended to improve the speed of facebook’s networks in the anticipation of more live and recorded video being played on the social media site, as much as 70 percent of its traffic by 2020 according to an article on digital trends. according to an article on tech crunch, facebook also needs the improvements for internal data analysis that it uses to affect the user experience. 

along with facebook, other companies such as linkedin and google, have talked about making the move to 100g in its data centers. the difference is facebook’s willingness to keep its designs open source, as part of the open compute project.

backpack has the same performance level s of 6-pack, which was facebook’s first platform, but it incorporates a better thermal management system to support 100g asic chips and optics. it also has a orthogonal direct chassis that allows more air to flow through for better cooling.

wedge 100 is already available and facebook insists that backpack will be released early next year as well.

learn more about backpack at https://code.facebook.com/posts/864213503715814/introducing-backpack-our-second-generation-modular-open-switch.